Hoomanely raises $1.8M for an AI feeding bowl that flags sick dogs

Dogs are good at hiding when something is wrong, and Hoomanely, a Palo Alto startup, thinks it can help owners catch health problems sooner with an AI platform that gathers data through a sensor-laden feeding station called the EverBowl. The station measures a dog’s food and water consumption and eating speed, and records chewing and swallowing sounds, facial thermals, oral motions, and other signals.

Hoomanely’s AI platform analyzes that data to establish a baseline for each dog, then flags prolonged departures from it to the owner through an app and long-term reports, which the company says can give veterinarians more useful data if they get involved; the app also accepts input from the owner to keep the baseline updated. “Practically, the bowl is the best capture environment in a pet’s life: same place, same posture, same routine, twice a day, for years,” said Sai Supriya Sharath, Hoomanely’s co-founder and CEO, adding that appetite, hydration, and oral comfort are often among the first things disrupted by pain, dental disease, digestive issues, endocrine changes, and illness.

The platform was built after an 18-month beta test during which the company gathered about 5 million data points across more than 80 dogs. During that beta, the platform detected changes in one dog’s eating pattern that were eventually tied to a chipped, infecting tooth, and in another case flagged a sustained shift from a dog’s regular eating and temperature baseline that prompted the owner to get a diagnosis of tick fever.

The beta cohort was small, though, and the company has shipped only about 50 devices so far, offered through the EverBowl and app reports for a $29-per-month subscription. Sharath said Hoomanely doesn’t yet have independent sensitivity, specificity, or false-positive rates for clinical events — that would require a study comparing the system’s alerts against actual diagnoses — and the company is designing veterinary studies to measure those metrics across a larger group of dogs, reporting results by use case rather than as a single headline number. Hoomanely says the platform isn’t a replacement for a veterinary diagnosis, only a tool to help owners and vets spot potential issues faster.

The startup, which has raised $1.8 million in pre-seed funding and is starting conversations for a seed round, plans two more devices: EverSense, a wearable to measure movement and rest, and EverHub, which would accept input from third-party smart collars, feeders, or home devices. Because its data-capture system isn’t dog-specific, Sharath said the company’s long-term plan is to become an animal-health data company serving nutrition and insurance companies, potentially expanding to cats, livestock, or horses.

Why it matters

Hoomanely’s model depends on the same capture environment — a feeding bowl used twice daily for years — producing consistent enough data to catch health changes before symptoms are visible; whether that holds up will depend on the veterinary studies the company still needs to run before insurers or vets can treat its alerts as more than a hint.